Adrian Covert

If you are paranoid about the rise of a police state, it's time to pull out your metaphorical tin foil hat: according to Cnet, the FBI is attempting to strong-arm companies such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft into making their websites and services "wiretap-friendly."

As if CISPA and SOPA weren't already bad enough, Cnet says that, if permitted, this proposal would be amended to the 18-year-old CALEA legislature, which requires telecommunications companies to make their communication lines accessible for wiretaps.

"If you create a service, product, or app that allows a user to communicate, you get the privilege of adding that extra coding," a person who has reviewed the FBI's draft legislation told CNET. The requirements apply only if a threshold of a certain number of users is exceeded, according to a second person briefed on it.

And it's not just the FBI pushing for this either; the FCC is also pushing to make any voice or video chat service on the internet fall under the scope CALEA. The thought of this happening is terrifying, especially when you consider that many of us are required—for work, school, etc—to use these major services. And along with all the work the NSA is putting into their shiny new data center out in the middle of Utah, the government would basically have all the tools necessary to keep tabs on virtually all of us all the time. Yikes. [Cnet]